Horticultural forcing-house.



A. FRIELING. HORTICULTURAL FORGING HOUSE. APPLIOATION FILED FEB.17,1911. RENEWED FEB. 27, 1912.

1,026,576. Patented May 14, 1912.

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AUGUST FRIELING, OF LANGENFELD, GERMANY.

HORTICULTURAL FORCING-I-IOU'SE.

Specification of Letters Patent.

Patented May 14, 1912.

Application filed February 17, 1911, Serial No. 609,173. RenewedFebruary 27, 1912. Serial No. 680,162.

To all whom it may concern:

Be it known that I, AUGUST FRIELING, a subject of the German Emperor,residing at Langenfeld, Rhine Province, Germany, have invented certainnew and useful Improvements in Horticultural Forcing-Houses, of whichthe following is a specification.

This invention relates to forcing houses which, while being particularlyapplicable to the forcing of flowering shrubs, such as syringa, areequally applicable to the foreing of plants generally.

It has already been suggested to construct horticultural forcinghousesin such a manner that they may be disassembled and then rerected inanother position, so that the blooms of the plants already forced in theone position may be gathered, and the house utilized to force the plantsin the other position; whereby a succession of blooms may be obtained. 7

The time and labor involved in disassembling and reerecting is veryconsiderable. In addition to this the houses, which usually exceedtwenty meters in length by five meters in width, have been made fromvery light materials in order to facilitate this disassembling andreerection, and, consequently, a considerable amount of heat is lost.Further, the wear and tear of the houses subjected to the frequentdisassembling and re'elrection is very great. In addition to the abovedisadvantages there is also the considerable waste of heat involved inmaintaining the house in the one position for a sufliciently long timeto insure that the plants which are remote from the heating boiler shallhave been fully developed before the house is disassembled. Obviouslythe plants nearer the furnace are developed first and are often gatheredbefore the plants remote from the furnace have fully matured. The houseand its heating apparatus is, therefore, being retained a con siderabletime in one position unnecessarily.

The object of the present invention is to avoid the above mentioneddefects, and it consists in forming the forcing house without any floor,so that it can be placed over a permanent horticultural bed, and alsowith removable ends so that it can be moved periodically from oneposition to another on the aforesaid bed, or from one bed to another ina longitudinal series ofbeds.

The forcing house is preferably provided with" wheels adapted to run onrails arranged alongside the bed or series of beds, so as to facilitateits progress when moved from one position to another according to theprogress of the cultivation and gathering of the blooms or the like fromthe plants 011 the beds, the arrangement rendering the cultivation ofplants, such as syringa, or mock orange, much more economical andprofit-able than at present.

One form of the invention is shown by way of eXample in the accompanyingdrawings, in which- Figure 1 is a side sectional elevation of part of aforcing house, Figs. 2 and 3 are respectively a plan and end sectionalelevation corresponding to Fig. 1, and, Fig. 4 is a plan illustratingthe application of the forcing house to a horticultural bed or series ofbeds and means for moving the house from one position to anotherthereon.

The house is preferably constructed of an iron skeleton or framing is,having a glazed roof Z, and with side walls a, which may be partlyglazed and partly filled in with wood as usual. The ends Z), of thehouse are made removable, so that when the house has been placed overone bed or part of a bed of plants, such as syringa shrubs, and theblooms on said shrubs have been sufficiently developed for gathering,the ends 5, may be removed and the house moved along the bed withoutinjuring the shrubs. The ends I), may be simply hinged, collapsible, oren tirely removable, so long as they can be removed from their normalpositions sufliciently to allow for the passage of the house over theshrubs on the beds. When large houses are required, for instance a house25 meters long and 5 meters wide, it can be made in sections, each ofabout 5 meters in length, so that the sections may be detached from eachother.

In order to facilitate the moving of the house from one position toanother it is preferably provided with wheels 0, running on rails 0secured to wooden planks or sleepers 03, extending along the sides ofthe beds. The sleepers d, are provided with eyes (Z to receive the endsof cross rods (Z whereby to retain the tracks in adjusted parallelrelation, and at the same time provide convenient means for quickly andconveniently laying or removing the tracks. In order that the level ofthe house may be maintained on uneven ground, or otherwise adjusted, thewheels 0, are mounted in an adjustable manner. For example, their axlesm, are inserted in any pair of a series of holes 0, in brackets 29,secured to the structure or framing of the house. In this way eitherside of the house may be raised or lowered. A hot water boiler f,provided with any suitable form of furnace is arranged in a lateralrecess at one end of the house. The heating pipes g, connected with theboiler in any suitable manner are arranged along the sides of the houseand below the glass roof, so that they ofier no obstruction when thehouse is moved over the shrubs on the bed. The highest points of theheating pipes 9, have vents g projecting through the roof of the house.If the return pipe g, of the heating system traverses the house asinclicated for instance in Fig. 3, then it is arranged so that it can beeasily detached at both ends from the other pipes of the heating system,and does not offer any obstruction to the movement of the house over thebed. WVhen the house is built in sections, for instance, each of about 5meters in length, then the heating pipes which pass along the sides ofthe house and beneath the roof are made in corresponding lengths orsections.

In practice the syringa or other plants are ranged in any suitablenumbers, side by side, in beds of 180 meters in length and 3 meters inwidth. The movable forcing house here inbefore described is mounted atthe beginning of the bed, as indicated in Fig. 4. The heating applianceis started and the cultivation or forcing of the plants begins. Obviously, as the interior of the house is hotter nearer the boiler, theplants in proximity thereto are developed earlier than those more remotetherefrom; their degree of development usually varying in relation totheir distance from the boiler. Theblooms from the shrubs nearer theboiler can, therefore, be gathered first. When the gathering iscompleted over a section of from three to five meters, the ends Z), ofthe house are raised or temporarily removed and the Copies of thispatent may be obtained for five cents each, by addressing theCommissioner of Patents.

house is moved over a suitable distance, for instance, by means of awindlass h, Fig. 4. The shrubs from which the blooms or the like havebeen gathered remain in the open while those which were inside, butremote from the boiler and therefore only partly developed or in bloomare now nearer the source of heat. Fresh shrubs are also brought underthe cover of the house. The shrubs which are now nearer the boiler arebrought to full bloom in a very short time, the blooms being dulygathered and the house moved on again. The interior of the forcing houseis therefore always being fully utilized at its maximum efficiency andthe cultivation of the syringa or other plants is rendered much moreeconomical and profitable than hitherto. Moreover, the progressivecultivation carried out in accordance with the invention has a veryfavorable in fluence on the plants and blooms are devel' oped of a sizeand beauty hitherto unobtainable.

Although the invention has been described by way of example as appliedto the cultivation of syringa it is applicable for forcing any otherplants.

I claim:

A forcing house having a fioorlessstruo ture, movable end parts on saidstructure, wheels 011 which saidstructure is supported, a lateralchamber on said structure, a heating device in said chamber, circulatingpipes from said heating device to the interior of said structure, aplurality of planks adapted to be loosely laid on the ground, railsfixed to said planks, eye plates on said planks and cross tie rodsfitting in said eye plates to give a cross bracing for said planks andrails.

In testimony whereof I aflix my signature in the presence of twowitnesses.

AUGUST FRIELING. lVit-nesses LOUIS VANDORY, FRANzIsKA STADTEN.

Washington, D. 0.

